A Non-Academic & Subjective View of Poetry and Aspects of Compositioning

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It is by comparisons that one would define my musings as poetry or assess its quality. Subjectively, some of it is good. Subjectively, it is, I would submit, all poetry.

Some would argue it is not poetry in its purest or most sublime form. We all have our own styles; even the forerunners as initiators and then, the emulators of what we consider the classic styles. To me, what ultimately defines poetry's style is a soliloquy of meaningful language which acts as a music of words transferred and then imbibed, as connective tissues of thoughts. Hopefully, be they a canter, a trotting or galloping or, at times, a full charging rhythm of advancing feeling and thought; they ultimately be a soothing or stimulating flow words. Good poetry (as too prose) is to paint a picture. Poetry can more oft and more easily go deeper in its use of word interconnections by travelling, not just horizontally and sequentially linear in thought but, more gratifyingly (for both the poet and an interested reader) in deft combinations deeper into the latent unseen thoughts behind the thoughts and, where the formulating and large scale comprehending speaks to us from. This place is the place of the subsurface waters and undercurrents our oft unregulated surface chatter of thought which, in its insouciant and reflexive 'static', edies and floats upon it. This under the surface effect of poetic catalyzation, infused analysis and resultant melding, is the targeted place of poetic intensity. This deeper place, this place that is the target of highly meaningful stirring poetry, is the place behind and just below the surface of the linear and reactive, first level, 'old story', conditioned, 'go to', non-participatory processing. To wit, the places of active thought vs. reactive thought. Poetry with its form and, with a correctly provocative and evocative message, actively directs us towards and into this place of depth and formulation. Yes, poetry can be witty and whimsical, comical and simply amusing. But, and regardless, in allowing, in awareness or not, the connecting of the inflow of the word bundling of good poetic intrusion, just as one would have turn tumblers in a lock, good poetry of evocation can, likewise, turn the libraries of our own mind without the normal and natural posturing and fear generally inherent in the filtering process of another's intrusions. Thus, through poetry's palliative nature of deeper self-evocation, there exists, if correctly done and containing a content of interest or curiosity, a self-trust found being set loose as connections of choice that are then become theirs, the readers'. Therefore, poetry as a vehicle of crafted form, can or may succeed in conveying its message if there is one.

Poetry, in its ability to drop deeply into a receptively considering mind, through use of multi and layered word comparisons with their potential for evocative congressing of interconnections, produces more than information: I submit, it produces a resonance of rearrangement of the thought interconnections themselves. It, the mind, imbibing good poetry at its best, does not just weigh the input. It (allegorically) repositions and levels the scales of understanding themselves; and, even may too, by being steered to consider and co-incorporate different pathways and combinations thereof, in these new unitings of analysis (stirred and hence now required), take the reader beyond the existing formulated and measured mission statements of those various comparative thought libraries which preceded the poetic intercession at hand. They can, in effect, dust off and rearrange the books of thoughts and the vaulting holding them as well. More simply put (speaking of a lulling of poetic input and of good content), if the poetry simply resonates freely and without fear on a deep personal level in the mind-world of the one who is the recipient of reading or hearing, the poetry has achieved its highest goal. As a note to this concerning my poetry, as is my nature as well, and granted I do indulge occasionally in a passionate rant or travelogue of social conjunctures and conjectures, I would have the resonance of intrusion contained in my poetry be most ofen of celebration and written in an upholding of a logic of Light. Carried upon form, this attempted transfer of message and(/or) the mere raillery of pure entertainment, constitutes the simplest definition and the primary undertaking of poetry.

Are there only statically defined boundaries of good poetic structure? To me, generally, a poem or, poetry if you will, should be visually cohesive and pleasing. The pattern of sound should then follow. From this, it rests as it should, on content. Structure can be said to be in the eye of the beholder as well as the ear. It can, at times, in its blocking, be both an art of the visual and, of punctuation. Poetry is simply part poetic oration. Winston Churchill was a master of blocking his messages of oration by this very technique. His speeches, including those of epochal and epical import and impact, were self and handwritten; next, polished, cadenced, paused and ultimitely delivered and projected using the ouvert subtlety of the visuality of this written form of structure. In my approach, it is equally, (or more so, as poetry vs. pure oration, is generally read by the subject audience) applicable to poetry as well.

I also submit, from my perspective as it concerns structure becoming part of both the beholder's eye and the flow of the presentation itself, that structure can (and should perhaps where possible) be much more than what is usually and normally but a two dimensionally conceived page with a traditional flatline of typesetting. Much as the illumination of manuscripts was intended to bring forth the written word; so did and do the troubadours of yore and present with their cadance, costume and, props of visual embellishment in the furtherance of their message and the enhancement of its exchange. In this vein, so too at times can the creative use of a multimedia presentation, such as for instance, web-design and associated graphics, attempt or succeed in accomplishing the same. I am not in any way saying or indicating that the poetry itself should not stand on its own but, rather, simply saying, it can at times be felt and seen as more. Ansel Adams's black and white photos stand on their own. An optically false color enhanced (corresponding to wavelengths of energy) HST (Hubble Space Telescope) photo, represented and displayed as a presentation for our brain, stands equally on its own or, differently perhaps even more so. Here, I suggest, so can and does some to most poetry presented with a flow of optically gracefully blended, meaningfully patterned, brush strokes of words upon a canvas of art and eliciting visual provocation.

As to the specifics of delivery, as it is generally approached, there is always the chasm and debate around freeform; and, the deservedly unavoidable, genial and respectful acknowledgement due the more historically traditional forms of structure, meter and, rhyme. In delivery, as for meter and rhyming; yes, classically pure rhyme and perfect meter can be musical, rhythmical and, melodic; but, so too can alliteration, a thoughtful mellow metering of word rifts and, word compounding composed of overlapping paired (or more) nouns or verbs in a Venn or synthesis of idea reverberations conjoined with attributively murmuring whorles of modifiers. Poetry should not be offhandedly defined (let alone contrasted in fair rivalry) by merely throwing paint buckets of words at a canvas; but, neither should poetry be agrandized and defined simply by a contrived packaging of words and syllables wrought of mathematically tight and classically defined weaponry and tactics. Poetry more often, more easily and, more readily [than either prose or prosaicness] lends itself to an ultimately connected, spiraling, of tangential, `streaming of consciousness`, thought-podding and too, the expansion of ideas and aphorisms into their constituents of granularity. No matter the composite or aggregate of approach; again, the final objective should be the enjoining of the reader's mind by effectively communicating to and entertain it as deeply as possible in the touching of its receptivity through a soothing and meaningful rhythmic warmth of word flow carrying the ideas of exchange at hand.

In further delving into presentation as a `can and should` ability; traditional rhyming has the ability, in its mantra like cadance, to provide the musical rhythm and soothing heartbeat allowing it to go deeply, as does good music even in a foreign language. As for the `may and might` component of highly structured rhyming poetry of form; it ultimately is ungratifying if its combinations of structural weight, the spinning of words, content and message, do not positively or quizzically evoke and provoke. To me, poetically put, the best of poetry, in any form, is to positively evoke, provoke and, ultimately, hopefully then, gratify and satisfy. There are more ways than laboriously constructed, classically structured, meter and rhyming to accomplish this evocative experience of positive and worthwhile thought exchange.

Poetry, at its best, allows not just its primary purpose, good and creative communication; but also even, access to portals of creativity pertaining to structure; and too, the creation process with words themself. Poetry gratifyingly allows a certain license of freedom to take liberties with the ridged sentence structure required of prose and thus, allows the rearrangement of words beyond their more conventional placement and phrasing. This is actually highly significant. As words, concepts and, their ordering are stressed variously or differently in disparate foreign languages, poetry in its presentation of word order and the use of prepositions, can be thought of as ambidextrously multi-lingual. Gleefully too, at times with tactful deliberation, it even allows the creating and new genisising of words and their shadings; and, in venturing if successfully so, expanding the thought-matrix in which they, the foundationings themselves, had been birthed.

At this point, I will desist and let you go on to decide how you or an academia should dissect and quantify, analyze and qualify, the framework I choose in comfort that then carries the messages and mundanities I muse upon and share.